


we were lovers in a past life (i can see it in your green eyes)

by plinys



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Archaeology, Damsels in Distress, Except Kili is the Damsel in this case, F/M, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:12:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eager to get out of his university office, Kili accepts an invitation from an old friend that brings him to the Amazon Rainforest where he very nearly gets himself killed because he "lacks a sense of self-preservation," according to the woman who keeps having to rescue him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were lovers in a past life (i can see it in your green eyes)

**Author's Note:**

> So [Kiliel Library](http://kiliel-library.tumblr.com/) was offering out modern au prompts to do for their challenge and I got one which was: 
> 
> "We’re in South America, Kili is a geologist who has just flown in from London and is supposed to examine the remains of a temple they found in the jungle. On his way there, he gets a attacked by a tiger/treats on a snake and his butt is saved by no other than Tauriel/Tamara Greenwood, a member of the guard of the scientists doing research at the temple. During all this (and that I will leave it to you, to decide whether you want reincarnation to play a role) Kili has a strange sense of deja vu, has he been here before? He also seems to remember the face of his savoir but she is from Vermont, so they have probably never met. If you want, they remember in the end :) Otherwise, just have them fall for each other over the campfire when he tells her about the promise he made to his mom."
> 
> And as somebody studying archaeology myself I simply couldn't resist running away with this, though I admit, I sort of got away from the prompt a bit/a lot. Oops...

Two weeks in the Amazon Rainforest that was all this was supposed to be, he had time between the classes he was teaching to swing by help an old friend out, and gather enough information and data that he could publish another paper off of. A simple get in and get out sort of thing.

Doctor Grey had insisted that it would be easy, barely take any of his time or effort, and be a good experience.

Kili had just not thought through what sort of experience the doctor qualified as a _good_ one.  

See the thing about actually being in the field rather than his comfortable office back in London is that there was actual danger about him.

 Back at the university the worst he has to deal with are overly pushy undergrads determined to get the best marks and trying through thinly veiled attempts to offer him bribes to get them.

Here though there’s actual nature. The very stuff he had been longing for weeks before while sitting in his office grading undergraduates papers and eating cheap cafeteria food. 

When Doctor Grey had called him up asking if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to stop by Kili had been quick to jump at the opportunity.

 Now though the notion seemed a lot less Indiana Jones and a lot more Jaws, or whatever the Jaws equivalent for South African jungles were.

Jaguar?

Whatever it was, he wasn’t certain, zoologists, praise them, were lucky not to have Kili among their ranks

Though he may not have been among any ranks for much longer, seeing as the giant cat inches from eating Kili alive was very much reminded him why he had always been a dog person.

Dogs were friendly, loyal, and not about to lead to his untimely death.

Cats, on the other hand, were nothing but trouble.

Though Kili supposed that if nothing else this would at least be an interesting story to tell or be told. He could almost imagine the next Durin clan gathering when somebody asks why he’s not there and his brother tersely replying that he was eaten by a giant cat.

That could be his legacy.

Or it would have been had someone else not appeared, his savoir in a brown leather jacket, who fired a shot of her gun off into the tree frightening not only Kili, but the animal as well causing it to scamper away as fast as its paws could carry it.

She turns to talk to him then, his savoir, and she’s beautiful. Red hair bright like a precious gem, soft tanned skin and high cheekbones, long legs and limbs that seemed to stretch on forever. Though that may have been due to the fact that he was still on the ground staring up at her.

 “Are you an angel,” he asks cutting her off.

“No afraid not,” she replies without even blinking.

“Then I’m not dead,” he says, taking the hand she offers him to pull himself up off the ground, stumbling a bit as he gets his footing.

“Doctor Durin, are you alright?”

“Professor.”

“What?”

“It’s Professor,” Kili says as he works to catch his breath, his heart is still hammering too loudly in his chest, whether from lingering fear or something else.

The woman sighs and mumbles something Kili cannot catch that sounds vaguely like ‘pompous brits’ before turning back to him again, “Professor Durin then, are you alright?”

“You could just call me Kili,” he offers.

“Could I call you out on dodging the question?”

“No, yes, I,” Kili says with a light laugh still tripping over his words, “I’m fine. A bit banged up, but I’m fine.”

“Professor, you’re shaking,” she says.

Kili opens his mouth to disagree with her, but as he does so he brings his hands up slightly and notices the tremor in them, “oh, look at that, I am.”

\---

The site’s nurse had looked him over muttered something in Portuguese before giving him the verdict of taking some time to lie down and handed him a shock blanket, of all things. And since Kili never one to take the advice of doctors or just listen to anyone in general, he strived to be contrary in all aspects of his life, he had decided that the best place to “ _take it easy”_ would be on one of the various fallen logs scattered around the camp that they used as benches.

He had even put up the shock blanket as a sort of impromptu sunshade, though as the sun shifted it had become rather obsolete and instead he turned to rely on his sunglasses.

The thing was, Kili wasn’t expecting any company, which was why he was a bit caught off guard when somebody stood above him casting a shadow across his face. He opened his mouth to tell the person to move on or insist for the hundredth time that he was fine, but he couldn’t finish that thought for as he looked over the rim of his aviator glasses Kili notices just who it was.

His savoir from earlier, now at second glance she was just as beautiful and striking as before. Her heard looked a burnt orange color in the sunlight, the tight braid it had been in earlier now having been let loose so that it cascaded over her shoulders framing a tan face with high cheekbones and eyes that when they met his own he was able to make out as a deep green like the foliage of the rain forest around them.

There is something oddly familiar about her that Kili could not place his finger on for the life of him.

“Hello, Professor,” she calls down to him, “I’m not interrupting a great scientific breakthrough am I?”

“Not that all,” Kili greets back, pushing himself to sit upright in a move that lacks any grace at all and pats the seat beside him as an offering, “and archaeology isn’t exactly a science in any case.” Though he supposed that particular verdict depending on who was asking. There were other professors he had met that would insist to their dying breath that archaeology was something that ought to be on the same level as biochemistry or medicine, but Kili wasn’t too picky when it came to labels.

She takes the seat beside him without much hesitance.

“I never did get your name,” Kili says once she’s sat.

“Tauriel.”

“That’s a rather pretty name,” he says with a smile, though not a particularly familiar one, which cannot account for why she looks so familiar to him. He supposes she might just have one of those faces, but Kili cannot imagine that for he would have known this face anywhere, even though they’ve only briefly met already the vision of her is permanently saved in his mind.

“Thank you,” she says a bit skeptically, raising a questioning eyebrow at him before continuing, “I was just checking in to see if you were alright, you we’re a bit shaken earlier after everything.”

“Well, I nearly died,” Kili answers with a shrug as if this was an everyday occurrence for him. When the reality was far thing from that, Kili’s usual extent of near death experiences came from riding his motorcycle and happened far more than he would like to admit, some people really needed to learn how to drive their own vehicles and not nearly kills him on the road. “Apparently that sort of feeling is normal.”

“Did you need me to get someone for you,” she starts, moving to push herself up off the log, but Kili reaches out a hand to quickly stop her.

“No, I’m fine,” Kili quickly insists, “really I was fine before and I’m fine now, even got a free blanket out of it.” At that he points up at that shock blanket that hung above them which was enough to get a laugh out of his companion, and oh, she has the most beautiful laugh.

“I’m not certain that’s its intended use,” Tauriel remarks, her voice still light with laughter.

“I’m not certain I give a damn,” he replies matching her tone, which only makes that perfect smile wider.

“No you wouldn’t,” she says shaking her head.

He supposes he couldn’t argue with that, though he does make a rather comical pout simply because he likes to be contrary.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Tauriel starts, “I was wondering what inspired you to become a professor?”

“Jurassic Park,” Kili answers instantly.

He had gotten this question before. Fought with his family over the notion of it, listed off endless reasons to admissions councils over the years, passed his words off as life advice to graduate students not many years younger than he was, and over the years he had always been able to explain it best with two simple words.

“What?”

“The movie with the animatronic dinosaurs,” he clarifies.

“No, I know, I’ve seen the movie, but this isn’t exactly Jurassic Park,” Tauriel gestures around them at the site.

“Clearly.”

“I was honestly expecting Indiana Jones, if anything.”

“Never was much of a Harrison Ford fan,” Kili replies, “there was just something about his face.”

“Something about Harrison Ford’s face? Are you kidding me that guy was Han Solo and Indiana Jones, like every girl’s wet dream comes to life,” Tauriel says in a more than mildly offended tone.

“I didn’t know girls had wet dreams, though I am quite fascinated,” he smirks. Though when Tauriel shoots him a glare for the comment he holds up his hands in peace and tacks on the comment of, “for science, of course.”

“Of course,” she repeats back in a mocking tone, “though I thought you weren’t a scientist.”

“I’m not.”

She rolls her eyes at that, “I’m just saying what does Jurassic Park have that makes it so much better?”

“Giant animatronic dinosaurs,” he states with a flourish of his hands.

“Then if you’re so interested in dinosaurs what are you doing here,” Tauriel asks.

 Kili shrugs at her comments. “The paleontology department at my university was shit, but since I refused to go into accounting like the rest of my family. I had to find something else. Somehow I ended up walking by the anthropology department, and I guess you could say that the rest is, well, _history._ ”

“You’re terrible.” 

 “Thank you. So, what about you, then,” Kili asks with a cheeky grin, “what mystic force brought my savoir to me?”

Tauriel shakes her head at the nickname, pushing a strand of auburn hair behind her ear, she speaks up, “I was looking for a change.”

\---

“I feel like we’ve met before,” Kili says when he runs into Tauriel a few days later around the campsite, not having seen her since she stopped by when he was supposed to be resting. Kili had been cleared for active duty, or well research, since then though.

“Yes, we have,” she answers with an amused smile on her face, “I saved you from becoming kitten chow.”

Kili groans.

“No not that, before that. You’re with the university right? Maybe we attended one of the same talks or-“

“I’m not a Professor,” she cuts him off before he can finish; “I’m even a student. More like hired help.”

“So you’re local,” he asks skeptically taking in her sharp features and auburn hair, her skin is tanned slightly, but not enough that he would have been able to believe for a second that she would have been local, honestly it looks more like someone who has simply sat in the sun too long, with freckles clear on her tanned cheeks.

“Not that either,” Tauriel explains, “I did some worth with the peace corps, after I finished college, and then when this popped job opportunity showed up looking for people that knew their way around these parts I just jumped on the opportunity. I was,” she doesn’t finish the sentence though and Kili cannot help himself from wondering what words were left unsaid.

The professor doesn’t ask about her unfinished sentence and instead speaks up with a, “so if you’re not from here or with the university,” he pauses for a moment, taking another look at her features trying to find what exactly it is that makes her so familiar to him, “then there’s not any chance you’re from London?”

He doubted it; she had a very distinctly non-English accent.

In fact, he was willing to put money on her being American.

However, Kili had decided that it was worth a shot in asking if nothing else.

“I actually from Vermont,” she answers after a moment’s pause.

“Am I supposed to know where that is?”

“It’s near New York,” Tauriel offers, “in the states.”

“Ah,” Kili says triumphantly, so she was American, “I know where New York is.”

“An accomplished scholar,” she mocks

“You’re sarcasm is not entirely necessary.”

“My apologies, _Professor.”_

He laughs openly at that, “you know, you don’t have to call me that.”

“You insisted on the title,” Tauriel points out, and yes, he did, but really he had been caught up in the moment. Nearly died, rescued by a beautiful savoir, and yet still somehow he had been expected to have a coherent thought, “who am I to deny you that?”

“I also said you could call me Kili something with you seem determined to ignore.”

“Kili,” she repeats his name for the first time and oh god, there’s something about the way her accent rolls around the sounds that strikes him almost at once breathless. He could spend a lifetime listening to the way she says his name.

He almost wonders if he already has.

\---

The next time he runs into her is after nearly falling to his death.

The problem with ancient temples was that sometimes their floors weren’t exactly stable and while Kili didn’t fall too far down it was enough to actually kill him. Thought it was enough to cause one of the graduate students to scream which happened to draw the attention of those who had been standing guard outside the temple, which as luck would have it, included Tauriel.

“I’m not dead,” Kili shouts up to those above him.

And it is her voice that calls back down to him in jest, “are you certain?”

“Relatively speaking,” he quips.

He’s only a few stories down and watches with amazement as Tauriel ties a rope off to something before using it to swing down below to where he is almost effortlessly. Her movements are fluid and graceful even when leaping down to where he is, like an Olympic gymnast.

“Are you alright,” she asks this time her joking tone from before replaced with a slightly worried one, one low enough that those above them would not be able to heart.

“I’m fine,” he insists a remnant of their first meeting, though now he could safely say that he wasn’t shaking. However, when he took a step forward towards her in an attempt to prove his point Kili hissed as his right foot made contact with the ground. Biting off his curses, he settles for a grimace,” slightly less than fine.” 

It didn’t feel broken, probably sprained or twisted at least, definitely something that he was going to be dragged off to the medical tent for. The thought of which Kili didn’t find particularly pleasing, no matter how comfortable those shock blankets were.

“You’re hurt.”

“Clearly,” he replies, earning him a glare.

“You won’t be able to climb up then,” Tauriel says with a frown.

“Climb up! How was I supposed to be climbing in the first place,” Kili asks, his voice raising loud enough that he can be heard by the graduate students hanging out around where he had fallen from, who snicker at his misfortunes. 

“With the rope, obviously,” she responds as if it were a common knowledge, “it’s simple really.”

“Maybe for you, being all flowy and graceful.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not a word,” Tauriel interjects.

 “Whatever, you’re like an acrobat and whereas I am lucky if I can twenty-four hours without tripping over myself or breaking something.”

Tauriel rolls her eyes at that, mocking him, “clearly.”

“Oh ha ha,” Kili replies sarcastically.

He wonders if somebody has invented a scale for eyerolls, like a Richter Scale, because this one seems ever more intense than the one before. She doesn’t say anything back to him, rather turns to the people gathered above and shouts something quickly about them getting something to help get him out of there since in her opinion he was an “inconceivably accident prone doctor.”

His playful protest of, “professor,” does earn him another one of her laughs.

“You know,” Kili says once whoever was up there has scampered off to who knows where, “we could always follow where this tunnel leads,” he says pointing with his flashlight, “you’d have to let me lean on you, but I’m sure we’d find a way out.”

“We could also just wait for the men I sent off,” Tauriel replies unamused.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Where’s your sense of self-preservation?”

“I don’t believe I have one of those,” Kili admits with a smirk.

“No shit.”

“My mother used to call me reckless, she might still,” _if we ever talked_. 

“I can see why,” Tauriel says looking him over once. 

“Said I never thought things through or took good enough care of myself.”

 Kili remembered too many times as a child getting scolded after falling off his bicycle his mother asking why he wasn’t wearing a helmet and not accepting it when he casually shrugged at her comments. His casual indifference towards his own mortality had always been something that had been able to give his mother a fright. She always thanked Fili for at least being reasonable, insisting that she could only afford to have one completely reckless son, a title that Kili claimed with a smirk.

“Maybe you just need somebody to look after you,” Tauriel remarks almost too quiet to hear, but Kili cannot ask what she means by that or even playfully as if that’s an offer because the next second the graduate students return with a ladder and an awful plan to get them out of there which miraculously works.

\---

After the whole mess with nearly falling to his death and getting his foot looked out by the same disgruntled nurse as before Kili has a pleasant, or well pleasant enough, dinner with the very man who invited him out to the site nearly two weeks before. The doctor smiles at him, insists that this adventure has surely been an exciting one, but that he must have students and papers to get back to. He also makes some comment about how Kili’s uncle Thorin would be less than pleased if he returned his nephew to England in a body bag, which at the rate Kili was going didn’t seem so impossible. 

Doctor Grey had completely ignored Kili’s protests that he was nearly thirty and could make his own decisions regardless of the opinions of his slightly estranged family.

Still the conversation had ended with Kili holding a plane ticket back to London in his pocket.

He tried not to be bitter about the fact that he was essentially being kicked out after having been personally requested weeks before.

Every Friday night the dig’s crew held big bonfires and while Kili had ducked out of last weeks, he figured since it was to be his last night there he might as well join in on the festivities. Though, his willingness to join in might have been influenced by the fact that he noticed a particular woman among the crowd of people.

They exchanged pleasantries quickly, before Kili was offered the seat beside her and dropped the bombshell of what had been bothering him.

“Doctor Grey is insisting that I’ve helped enough. I think he really just wants me to stop nearly getting killed; third time’s the charm and all that. I’m heading back to London in the morning.”

“So soon,” Tauriel says a bit tersely. The light of the campfire casts shadows over her face that feel almost intimidating.

“Yes, apparently I don’t have a choice in the matter,” Kili says finally letting the hint of bitterness slip into his voice, “I was technically only to be here for two weeks, but that would have at least meant that I would be staying till Monday. However, given the circumstances…”

“Right,” Tauriel nods, “how is it then? Your foot?”

“Not broken,” he remarks triumphantly.

“That’s good.”

There stretches a silence between them, one that could almost be awkward were it not for the sounds of the campfires around them, people laughing with their friends, the sizzle of the flame, and the sounds of the forest as a distant backdrop to it all.

It’s almost peaceful.

The silence is broken after a few minutes when Tauriel speaks up, “do you believe in fate or past lives?”

“I’m not exactly a philosopher,” Kili offers her a confused look. He wasn’t sure what sort of small talk he had been expecting or what people normally talked about around campfires at these sorts of digs, but if he remembered anything from his own trips years ago philosophical discussions weren’t usually on the menu until they’d had a few more drinks, “though I do know the lyrics to that Ke$ha song.”

“The what?”

“The song,” Kili explains, “my cousin’s a huge fan of her, which would be odd considering the look of him, but I try not to question things.”

“Your cousin,” she says skeptically.

“Yes,” he insists, ignoring her pointed gaze, “why are you asking anyways?”

Tauriel shrugs at that, “just being here. Sometimes I wonder about things.”

“If you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you’ve been here before?”

“I,” she starts then stops narrows her eyes at him suspiciously, “aren’t those song lyrics?”

“If it’s any consolation it’s a different song,” Kili says with a smile, “though to answer your question, I’m not certain that I believe in much of anything.”

“Me neither,” Tauriel admits, “and this is going to sound crazy, but I feel oddly like I’ve met you before or like I was meant to meet you. You’re the exact opposite of what I would normally look for in a guy, I tend to go for blond douchebag with nice cars-“

“I have a nice car.”

“-but there’s something about you that is so striking and so fascinating. It’s hard to explain,” Tauriel finishes.

“I feel the same way,” Kili replies before she can have a second to doubt herself, “minus the ‘blond douchebags’ part.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” he answers with certainty.

He cannot explain it, nor does he think he will ever be able to explain what exactly it is about her that so enraptures him each time they meet, but there is something there. Kili doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see the facts of, it’s easier that way

“Come on London,” Kili says before he can think to second guess himself.

“Right now?”

“Yes, no, I mean, sure if you wanted to, or when the dig’s over and you’re work is done,” he starts rambling, running a hand through his dark hair messing it up even more than it usually is. “I could show you around the city; it’s relatively harmless there, in comparison. Or I could come to Vermont when you head back home? I’ve got a conference at Columbia I’m to attend in a few months, and well you said it was near New York.”

“It’s not that near,” she says reluctantly.

“We could figure something out,” Kili says, “if you wanted that is.”

“I think, I just might like that.”

\---

A month later Kili receives a call that has him up out of his chair in moments, tripping over his own feet and knocking books off his bookshelf in the process, the number that he had saved into his phone back in the rainforest around a campfire.

He could clearly remember how she had programmed it into his phone taking a terrible selfie as he did the same on hers, just in case, they had said, in case times or plans changed. Kili had honestly not expected to hear anything from her for a while at least, there wasn’t exactly the best cell service in the rainforest, and if the updates he got from Doctor Grey were anything to go by it would probably be another year until they were finished.

Yet, here he was, staring down at his phone’s screen where the very same number that he had resisted the urge to call more times than he could count was now calling him. His phone shows off that picture her that night as the campfire cast shadows over her visage smiling back at him like a relic from the past.

No, far more precious than any relic he’s studied before.

“Hey,” he answers the phone, cradling it between his ear and shoulder.

“Hey, sorry this is going to sound completely reckless and crazy, but uh, I’m in London.”

                                                                                                                                                                                     

 

 


End file.
